Thousands of people have taken to the streets of Ibiza this Sunday to protest against the airport remodeling project promoted by Aena and to demand that an end be put to mass tourism. The demonstration began shortly after 6:00 PM at the Vara de Rei promenade and traveled through several streets of Vila. The National Police estimated about 4,500 people, while the organization placed the attendance between 5,000 and 10,000 protesters.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Palma and Ibiza this Sunday (where the Police speak of 4,500 people and the organization, of 10,000) to protest against the increase in airport capacity and demand that air traffic growth be curbed. The demonstration in the capital of the Balearic Islands began at 6:00 p.m. in front of the Government Delegation and ended at the Consolat de la Mar, with the slogan 'No more expansion, no more promotion'. The protest was called by the Platform against the Airport Expansion and was attended by neighborhood, environmental and social organizations.

The goal is to give a strong wake-up call to the administrations, a big one, that cannot be ignored or disregarded. "We are expecting thousands of people," asserts the president of Joves d’Eivissa, Marga Torres. The demonstration will depart on Sunday at 6 PM from Vara de Rey and, with a route of a little over a kilometer, it will pass in front of the Council and end at Reina Sofia park, where a manifesto will be read. The diffusion on social media has been very intense in recent days, carried out in coordination with the platforms against the expansion of the airports in Barcelona and Mallorca. "It was when we learned that a call was going to be made against the expansion of El Prat that we decided it was the moment; afterwards, Mallorca joined in," explains Marga Torres. "I believe there is a favorable social context and that the people of the Pityusic Islands clearly reject the airport expansion," reasons the president.

The expansion of Ibiza airport projected by Aena would affect two peripheral protection zones of the ses Salines natural park, as reported this Thursday by the environmental organization GEN-GOB. One is located to the east of the terminal, where the airport operator plans to build a new building, and the other to the west, in the area of the stream that the project proposes to bury.

At the beginning of the sixties, the Son Sant Joan airport was inaugurated in Palma, replacing the one in Son Bonet, and the Majorcans welcomed tourists at the foot of the runway with bouquets of flowers. The gateway to the island was just that, a door. Today that door has become a piece of machinery that has a lot, or everything, of a shredder. It is not a very exaggerated metaphor. Because Aena is no longer satisfied with managing an airport: it expands it, fills it, sells it, rents it, exploits it, and extracts as much juice from it as it can. Let us never forget that Aena is a majority public company. That is to say, this big business is very public, but very little of it is ours.

The Association of Youth of Ibiza (AJE) has called a demonstration for next Sunday, September 20, to protest against the expansion of Ibiza airport. The mobilization will begin at 6 p.m. in Vara de Rey and will go through the main streets of the city until reaching the island council, where a manifesto will be read.

The 'Less Tourism, More Life' platform has publicly denounced the creation of six new boarding gates in module D of Palma airport. This expansion, the platform has criticized in a message published on its X social network account, has occurred during the works being carried out at Son Sant Joan.

The director of Eivissa Airport, Marta Torres, defended this Thursday the expansion project promoted by Aena and denied that the objective is to increase the infrastructure's capacity or attract more tourists. "There is no intention related to a change in capacity," she assured during a press conference in which she presented the main lines of an action that foresees an investment of 230 million euros between 2027 and 2031.

The president of the Consell de Eivissa, Vicent Marí, has spoken out against the planned expansion of the island's airport. In statements to IB3 Ràdio, the president assured that these works "go against the tourism model proposed by the Consell" and also criticized harshly that he had to learn about both the expansion and the details of the works through the media. "We don't have to grow in quantity, we have to grow in quality," Marí stated.

The Platform Against Airport Expansion warns that expanding airports in the Balearic Islands could worsen the housing crisis and the over-tourism of the archipelago. In a statement, the organizations that make up the platform—including the GOB (Balearic Ornithological Group)—express "serious social concern" about the direction of Aena's airport policy, which—they claim—has the approval of both the Spanish government and the Balearic government. The activists recall that the Dora II Plan (2019-2025) already expanded the facilities, with more walkways, the widening of Terminals A and D in Palma, and increased parking capacity. But they warn that the future Dora III Plan (2027-2031) "is a ticking time bomb": it plans to allocate 600 million euros to Palma within a total package of 13 billion euros across Spain.